There’s a lot of things to consider when you’re planning on your once in a lifetime trip. Nevertheless, you want to make sure you can plan the trip efficiently, make cost savings while doing, and seeing as much as you can. After all, your chosen destination may not be in easy reach to be able to visit again.
So, where do you even begin with planning your once in a lifetime trip? We want to share with you our helpful top tips to make the planning and organization piece that little bit easier for you.
- Decide a budget and how to pay for the trip at least a year in advance of your planned departure date
- Choose your destination
- Decide how long you want to go for
- Do your research
- Get quotes from travel agents and compare prices
- Arrange annual leave as early as possible from work
- Plan your trip in more detail
- Head back to the travel agents or prepare your own itinerary
- Make sure you’re ready to pay
- Book your holiday!
So, we’ll look into the above points further, and really point what important things you need to consider. We think if you take on board these tips, it’ll really give you a well-rounded view of what you want from your trip, what is available for you to discover and how you can plan to appropriately budget for it.
1. Decide a budget and how to pay for the trip at least a year in advance of your planned departure date
Any holiday can put a strain on finances, but one which is once in a lifetime requires careful planning to ensure you can comfortably afford the trip without crippling yourself.
The three obvious ways to pay for the trip is either through savings, putting it on a credit card, or doing a mixture of both. Everyone’s financial status is different and so is how each individual handles their money so it’s worth looking into what is the best option for you.
We’ve written an article on how people afford to travel, which shares some tips on how you can reach your goal to travel. You can read it here.
2. Choose your destination
If someone asks you ‘if you could go anywhere in the world where would that be?’, people normally have an answer or at least a top 3. If you don’t holiday often, picking the right destination becomes even more important.
If you’re traveling solo, it’ll be easy to pick a destination as the only person you need to consult is yourself! But if you’re traveling with a spouse or partner, family and children, this can definitely influence your decision.
It’s definitely worth consulting and sharing ideas with whoever you are going to be traveling with. They might even come up with countries you didn’t even think of! It’s also important to consider the weather. Wherever you’re going make sure you’re going when the climate suits you.
If you need some inspiration, check out our article on where it’s hot right now. Click here to find out more. If the UK is your country of choice, lucky for you, you check out our guide to the UK seasons here. (Weather in the UK can really impact your holiday – there can be a lot of rainy, miserable days!)
3. Decide how long you want to go for
As it’s a once in a lifetime holiday, you’ll likely be going for a minimum of 10 days. The longer you’re away the more expensive it’ll be as you’ll be paying for those additional nights in hotels, additional meals, and activities, etc.
You need to think about balancing your budget as well as spending long enough to cover at least the main priorities you want to definitely see and do. You don’t want to go out there compromising on time and not making the most of your holiday, coming back feeling underwhelmed, and wishing you should have done more.
If it’s an international flight, and a long one, take into account the time you’ll be traveling as well as possible jet lag eating into your time away. If you’re traveling to Australia or Singapore from the likes of the UK for instance, you’re losing 2 days of holiday time in flights alone.
4. Do you research
Once you’ve decided on a destination, we cannot recommend this enough – DO YOUR RESEARCH! Information is so easily accessible with great blogs, reviews, YouTube videos so just go read and watch videos, and as you’re doing so list any cities, places, activities that seem of interest to you. List as much as you want, you can always narrow the list down later.
Research doesn’t only mean the internet. If you know any locals from your particular destination of choice, you cannot underestimate a local’s perspective. They can tell you any tourist traps to avoid, places that aren’t tourist areas but great to visit, restaurant recommendations etc. You can also ask about local practices, culture, what is deemed disrespectful an so on. The list is endless! It’s always good to be culturally aware.
You can also ask friends, family, colleagues you have visited the country on their experience, where they visited, how long they spend there, what places did they see and what activities did they do, where did they stay, and what time of year they visited.
It’s also worth checking if you should pre-book any excursions, before heading out. Sometimes this could be worth it if it’s a particular tour that needs to be booked in advance to ensure you’re guaranteed a place. A lot of the time, it’s cheaper to just book your tours when you get to the country.
Particularly in Asian countries you can often haggle and reduce the price dramatically from what they originally quote. In Thailand, most of the tours we booked were pretty much 50% off from the original price and booking tours in one go can also help reduce the price. The price is often inflated to begin with!
5. Get quotes from travel agents and compare prices
Once you’ve done your research, you’ve got a good idea of what your priorities are and what you want to get out of your trip, we would recommend splitting your list into 3 categories:
- Must-see and do
- Would like to see and do
- Nice to see and do
Then head to several travel agents in your area and get a quote from them. They may also recommend or suggest other activities or places to do or see that you haven’t heard of. If you’re interested, make a note of them and add it to one of your categories above.
It’s actually surprising how a quote between different travel agents can vary so much for a pretty similar trip. When we were planning our honeymoon to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, we got quotes ranging from £5000 to £10,000 for essentially the same trip! So, it’s definitely worth checking and getting an idea of how much you’ll need to budget.
6. Arrange annual leave as early as possible from work
Whatever line of work you’re in, we think it’s really important to arrange your time off as soon as possible. Understandably, a year or so in advance of when you plan to travel, you’ll not know the exact dates you’ll be traveling or for how long, but it’s better just to give a heads up to your manager that you’ll be wanting time off.
Thinking about a trip a year in advance also allows you to think of things like buying extra annual leave days as well as utilising bank holidays for other annual leave you want to take.
If your holiday booking is flexible, it may actually be worth booking the time off roughly when you think you’re going to be away and altering the dates to match your booking when you finally book. This definitely comes in handy if you’re planning on going away at times where a lot of people take holidays, for example, Christmas or school holidays so make sure you get in first.
There’s nothing worse than getting everything ready to book your holiday, but finding out your holiday won’t be approved as there are too many people off work at that time and you’ll need to cover them. Don’t take the risk, people!
7. Plan your trip in more detail
So, now you’ve done your research, you’ve got your quotes, and you’ll practically feel like an expert of your destination, you can at this point look to planning your trip in more detail i.e. flights, accommodation, tours, etc.
Sit down with your travel companions (not if you’re traveling solo of course) and thoroughly go through your list of places, accommodations, tours, and activities you definitely want to make part of your trip.
8. Head back to the travel agents or prepare your own itinerary
Check if any of the travel agents offered you packages that met everything you want to do. If you want your trip tailored then you can also do this with the travel agent. Obviously, this will come at a higher cost.
If you like planning your trip, you already have the details of accommodations, tours, and flights, you can use these to plan and book all these things yourself i.e. put your own itinerary together. This could work out a lot cheaper but mind you, it would take A LOT of time planning. But if that’s what you enjoy, then why not?!
If you decide to go with the travel agent, go back and finalize your trip. It’s also worth asking for a cheeky discount or if there’s anything they can do to make it a little bit cheaper. There’s no harm in asking!
If you’re going on your honeymoon, make sure you tell your travel agent and they can add it into the notes for your trip which is usually relayed to your hotels so you might get some extra perks. For example, when we went on our honeymoon, we pretty much got a room upgrade in every hotel, a cake, and a lovely decorated room.
9. Make sure you’re ready to pay
So, after all that planning, it’s time to confirm you have means to fund your trip. Work out the total cost of the holiday, whether that’s a quote from your travel agent or an itinerary you’ve put together yourself.
Add on any additional costs, such as how much you will need for spending money, booking airport parking, renting a car, etc.
There’s a lot of discussions around when it is best to book a holiday. It normally ranges from about a month to 3 months before you plan to travel, however, you can never guarantee this anyway so just book a few months before you plan to travel when you’re ready. Prices fluctuate and are dependent on many variables and you can’t foresee all of them!
Whichever way you have decided to fund your trip, make sure you have enough to pay for the trip and ensure any additional funds required as well as emergency money is available in time for your holiday.
10. Book your holiday!
And that’s it, book your holiday! Get excited!
So, to summarize…
We hope these tips will help you when planning your once in a lifetime adventure! We really believe they will help you save some money and make the most of your trip.
It’s easy to go to a travel agent and get them to do the work and agree to a ready-made package, but we strongly recommend doing your OWN research. If it’s once in a lifetime trip, you want to make sure you don’t miss anything that actually may make your trip just that little bit memorable!
If you’re interested in reading about some other organization tips for traveling or any other topics we’ve recently written about, here are some of our picks that we hope you will enjoy.
- Get Organized After Returning Home From Vacation
- How To Organize Travel Documents With These 5 Easy Tips
- How To Be Organised Before Going On Holiday – Our Comprehensive Guide
- How Many Royal Parks Are There In London?
- Best Places to Travel in Europe for the First Time
- Cultural Diversity in the UK – Why The UK is so Multicultural
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